Boruto grimaced in pain, but did not even glance at his bloodied left hand.
Breathing heavily, he crouched in front of Sumire Kakei and held out his still-uninjured right hand to her, palm up.
"Come back, Class Representative."
"Whoever is behind you, whatever your past or your orders, if that person can throw your life away so easily, if he doesn't care whether you live or die, why should you live for him? Why should you die for him?"
Under the moonlight, the boy's bloodstained face held an unquestionable resolve. His outstretched hand seemed ready to catch someone falling into an abyss.
"In the end, you have to choose your own path in life and walk it yourself. Dying for a purpose someone else forced on you isn't 'living' at all!"
Sumire stared at him, at that hand, at those eyes that seemed capable of driving away all darkness.
At that moment, all her past schemes, her mission, and her family's fate seemed to grow pale and distant before his burning gaze and hot blood.
She suddenly remembered something Mitsuki often said: "Boruto is my sun."
She had never quite understood it before, thinking it was simply Mitsuki's personal preference.
But now, on this cold, despairing night, surrounded by ANBU with her future uncertain.
Looking at this boy, wounded all over yet still reaching out to her, stubbornly trying to pull her back to the side of "light," she seemed, at last, to dimly grasp what that "sun" meant.
It was not some lofty, unreachable source of light. It was someone who would burn himself even in the darkness, giving off warmth and trying to illuminate everyone around him.
The next moment, the surrounding ANBU ninja silently tightened their encirclement, their cold gazes settling on the two of them.
Sai